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I recall NPR did a story about how Kid Rock tries to fight scalpers. http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2013/06/27/196277836/kid-rock-takes-on-the-scalpers http

by uremog 10y ago

I recall NPR did a story about how Kid Rock tries to fight scalpers. http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2013/06/27/196277836/kid-rock-takes-on-the-scalpers http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2013/06/27/196277836/kid-r... TLDR; The best seats are raffle-only. The next best seats are market priced, all other seats are dirt cheap. Reselling dirt cheap seats is discouraged by offering slightly more events than there is demand for. In other words, that strategy will have less (maybe even no) success for high-profile events which cannot offer more showings. Bots COULD still kill you, but if everyone who wants a seat can get one, bots will disappear because no one will buy them.

danieltillett 10y ago
I just suggested this from first principles :) Rather than raffle the best seats, sell a ticked that has an 50% chance of being a good seat and a 50% chance of being a dirt cheap seat and then decide on entry which seat you have. A true fan will be ok either way (they will of course be happier with a good seat), but the scalper won't be able to charge a premium for a good seat ticket.
- eridius 10y ago
  A true fan would probably be pissed off that some random person who's going on a lark gets awesome seats whereas the true fan is sitting in the worst area, despite paying the same price and despite the true fan probably buying their ticket first. Also, this system completely breaks down when you consider that people often go to venues in groups, which means they want to sit together, which means they need to buy their seats in a batch. If you don't know where you're actually sitting until you arrive, you won't end up sitting together.
  - danieltillett 10y ago
    A true fan is probably pissed off already that some rich bastard is in the good seats that they couldn’t get. The idea is to give the true fan a chance of getting a good seat while breaking the economics of scalping. There is no reason the allocation has to be 50-50. It could be 90-10 where the tickets are basically sold a little over the cheap price, but you have a chance on the night of being in the front row. The true fan is going to dream that they will be the lucky ones. The group issue could be solved in a number of ways, but the simplest would be to just sell the tickets in blocks and allocate the blocks to the good or to the cheap seats. Somewhat related to this topic the best concert I ever went to was the OK Computer tour by Radiohead (in 1998 from memory). A couple of friends and I decided at the last moment to go to the venue and hope that we could get some tickets off a scalper. Just as we arrived Radiohead released about 50 extra seats at rock bottom prices (less than $30) via the main ticket office. We end up in the second row of what was one of the concerts of the decade :)

by uremog 10y ago

danieltillett 10y ago

I just suggested this from first principles :) Rather than raffle the best seats, sell a ticked that has an 50% chance of being a good seat and a 50% chance of being a dirt cheap seat and then decide on entry which seat you have. A true fan will be ok either way (they will of course be happier with a good seat), but the scalper won't be able to charge a premium for a good seat ticket.

eridius 10y ago
A true fan would probably be pissed off that some random person who's going on a lark gets awesome seats whereas the true fan is sitting in the worst area, despite paying the same price and despite the true fan probably buying their ticket first. Also, this system completely breaks down when you consider that people often go to venues in groups, which means they want to sit together, which means they need to buy their seats in a batch. If you don't know where you're actually sitting until you arrive, you won't end up sitting together.
- danieltillett 10y ago
  A true fan is probably pissed off already that some rich bastard is in the good seats that they couldn’t get. The idea is to give the true fan a chance of getting a good seat while breaking the economics of scalping. There is no reason the allocation has to be 50-50. It could be 90-10 where the tickets are basically sold a little over the cheap price, but you have a chance on the night of being in the front row. The true fan is going to dream that they will be the lucky ones. The group issue could be solved in a number of ways, but the simplest would be to just sell the tickets in blocks and allocate the blocks to the good or to the cheap seats. Somewhat related to this topic the best concert I ever went to was the OK Computer tour by Radiohead (in 1998 from memory). A couple of friends and I decided at the last moment to go to the venue and hope that we could get some tickets off a scalper. Just as we arrived Radiohead released about 50 extra seats at rock bottom prices (less than $30) via the main ticket office. We end up in the second row of what was one of the concerts of the decade :)